One thing you can say about the St. Louis Cardinals is that even in 2021, an era of baseball with some of the most extreme numbers we've ever seen, they keep doing it their way.
On Thursday, St. Louis went up against Brewers righty Corbin Burnes, who is off to a historic start to the season. By the fifth inning, Burnes had struck out nine Redbirds. Then St. Louis second baseman Tommy Edman drew a walk. What's the big deal? It was Burnes' first walk of the season after 58 strikeouts, setting a new big-league record for most consecutive Ks without a walk.
Burnes held St. Louis to one run over five innings in his outing. His ERA on the season, built on that 58:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio, is 1.57. But here's the thing: The Cardinals won the game. Burnes' record dropped to 2-3 on the season. Meanwhile, Burnes' opponent, Cardinals ace Jack Flaherty, went six, struck out six, walked a couple and improved his record to 7-0.
This, in a nutshell, is the way the Cardinals have raced to an early lead in the NL Central and one of the best overall records in the majors. In an era in which pitching is pretty much defined by strikeouts, walks and the interplay between those two factors, St. Louis' staff doesn't do either of those things particularly well. Yet the Redbirds have been among baseball's best run-prevention teams.
Let's throw some arbitrary end points into the mix to illustrate how hot the St. Louis pitching-and-defense machine has been. Through April 21, the Cardinals were 8-10 and were giving up an average of 4.83 runs per game, ranking just 22nd in the majors.
It was early, to be sure, but this also seemed to suggest that some of the preseason forecasts that saw doom ahead for the Cardinals' strikeout-deprived pitching staff were onto something. At that point, St. Louis ranked 25th in strikeout rate and 28th in walk rate. The only thing keeping the defensive roof from caving in was that they'd given up homers on just 2.3% of plate appearances, the third-best mark in baseball.
But how long could that last? In 2021, if a pitching staff is letting too many balls in play and doing so with too many runners on base via the free pass, it's inevitable that such a team would be buried by a barrage of homers.
You can sense where this is headed. Since then, the Cardinals have gone on a tear, and it's been because of run prevention. St. Louis reeled off 15 wins in 20 games heading into its weekend series in San Diego, holding opponents to just 2.8 runs per game, the best mark in baseball during that stretch. Yet, the team strikeout rate rose only slightly relative to the league, and the walk rate actually got worse.
By the time the dust cleared and St. Louis had established itself as the early frontrunner in its division, the Cardinals had reached eighth in runs allowed per game. They ranked 26th in strikeout rate (22%) and 29th in walk rate (11.1%).
How in the name of exit velocity and spin rate is this possible?
This will read like something out of Baseball Digest, circa 1974, but it seems to simply be a matter of the Cardinals putting an elite defense on the field and pitching to that defense, while not allowing the opponents' top home run threats to beat them.
As for the defense, this was one area where St. Louis projected to be elite, perhaps the best in baseball. The fielders looked strong on paper anyway, but then the Cardinals traded for Gold Glove third baseman Nolan Arenado, which pushed Matt Carpenter and his iffy glove into a utility role. With elite fielders on both corners of the infield, all-time-great Yadier Molina behind the plate and young, fleet-footed outfielders eating up the open spaces of Busch Stadium, the Cardinals were built to win with defense.
After a so-so start, they are doing just that. St. Louis floundered in the bottom half of the defensive runs saved leaderboard for most of April, but the Cardinals have since jetted up the rankings, reaching as high as second earlier this week.
Edman has proven to be more than a worthy successor to premium gloveman Kolten Wong at second base. And the return of center fielder Harrison Bader a couple of weeks ago allowed St. Louis to finally put its originally designed outfield on display. As was projected, it's a team without a defensive hole. Even St. Louis' pitchers have helped the fielding cause by leading the majors in defensive runs saved at that position. During their 15-5 run, the Cardinals allowed an MLB-leading .239 average on balls in play.
Still, all the defensive prowess in the world won't help you if the other team is simply clubbing the ball over the fence. And while St. Louis' pitching staff isn't built on the foundation of strikeout and walk percentages that so many other teams employ, they have been almost unbelievably good at keeping the ball in the park.
During a 14-game stretch beginning April 29, a period in which St. Louis won 11 games, the Cardinals allowed just four home runs.
This is how a team with a meager strikeout rate and a terrifying walk rate vaults to the top of its division. The question now becomes: Given these swimming-against-the-tide trends, can they stay there?
The projection systems would say no. At the rest-of-season forecast at Fangraphs, St. Louis is projected to go under .500 the rest of the way.
It's not hard to understand why. Analytical systems favor strikeout pitching staffs because they are -- usually -- more predictable. The Cardinals' xFIP (an ERA estimate built primarily on strikeouts and walks) ranks last in the majors. The Cardinals have given up homers on just 7.8% of flyballs, the lowest rate in baseball, and this is another number that is not supposed to be sustainable over time.
Then again, the Cardinals put this roster together on purpose. The "supposed to" of the analytical systems doesn't mean much on the banks of the Mississippi, where they've seen only a single sub-.500 ballclub this century. The Cardinals' way may not be baseball's way at the moment, but so far in 2021, it seems to be working as well as ever.